FASHIONOFFICE INSIGHT
by publisher Karin Sawetz
November 2009



Academic research has one great benefit against commercial research: it surprises long-lasting!

Pro Academic Research!

Successful economies know that they benefit from independent research with a long-lasting effect that holds on over generations. The reason? That's easy: commercial research's aim is to boost the sales of one company immediately. Academic research investigates without the main aim to gain money (albeit, to earn money : academic research is no contradiction) in short time, but with the premier aim to deliver interesting results for the community; included are surprises.

Probably it's the 'surprise-factor' that makes academic research interesting for successful fashion companies such as H&M in Sweden or Benetton in Italy.

Simultaneously with the globalisation of the fashion business, academics became curious about the language of fashion and its messages. With the globalisation and consequently its interactive culture exchange, the development of trends and trend research has changed. Studying fashion became an academic discipline with research methods adapted from cultural studies and social sciences.

In 1994, the Italian manufacturer and store chain Benetton opened its communication research centre 'Fabrica' in Treviso. In Fabrica, talents can explore new ways of communication.

In 2006, the Stockholm University has established the Centre for Fashion Studies with the support of the Erling-Persson Family Foundation (H&M).

In late October 2009, the NPO & NGO Fashionoffice.org opened its academic research program for supporting partners. fashionoffice.org/press/
2009/mediainfo10-2009-2.htm

Video: The Vienna Circle and Logical Positivism.
Thoughts from the Vienna Circle (founded by Moritz Schlick, professor at the University of Vienna) influence our lives still today. What scientists such as Rudolph Carnap, Otto Neurath, Kurt Gödel, or Ludwig Wittgenstein have studied about in the 20ies and 30ies, can be found - for example - on the internet and in museums: the mathematical logic and semantics at search engines and behavioural targeting for ad- and content delivery, the abstraction of popular culture at the style guides by Jason Salavon or the art on the visualisation of the 'universe' from statistical data at Aaron Koblin in the video below. Not to forget to mention in this context the thoughts about the usage of words and meaning of text such as William S. Burroughs worked about in his 'Cut Ups'.
Most of the members of the Vienna Circle had to flee during National Socialism from Austria. Many emigrated to US and taught on universities.

News from the Fashionoffice research desk New statistics about Fashionoffice's traffic show that in October 2009 most of the fashion.at-users (approximately 40%) come from Pakistan. (Fashion.at and Fashionoffice.org are directed to the same webspace.) Compared to the data from Sept 2009 (ca. 40% from Germany and Austria), is this one of the most significant changes in the statistics. Fashionoffice tracked by the most elaborated tools online in Oct 2009.

The ‘Memorized-Data’-hypothesis
Fashionoffice's statistics of the most viewed articles from July to September and high ranking keywords verify the hypothesis that memorized data gain more attention. Publishers and advertisers have to calculate the impact of editorial content as well as online-campaigns with a new factor: the unprogressive data...

Style guides made of the abstraction of popular culture The American artist Jason Salavon’s work ‘Field Guide to Style & Color’ (2007) and ‘374 Farben’ (2007) is on view on occasion of the exhibition 'Fenomen Ikea' from 6 Nov 2009 to 28 Feb 2010 at the MKG (Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe) in Hamburg (Germany). The title '374 Farben' means ‘374 Colors’; the artist has named it referring to Gerhard Richter’s abstract paintings ‘Color Charts’ of the late 60ies/early 70ies. For his analytic work, Salavon has simplified each page of the IKEA catalogue into pure color and arranged 374 pages into charts. The Columbus Museum of Art-documentary gives insight into the artist's analytic view on trends in popular culture.

“You in yourself have the whole of the universe. When I cut you up in a certain way, I cut up the universe.” William S. Burroughs Video: William S. Burroughs cuts pages of books, newspapers and brings the words into a new meaning; in the documentary Burroughs says: “When I cut you up in a certain way, I cut up the universe.” By cutting up texts, he creates gaps in time and space. William S. Burroughs’ experimental writings, the ‘Cut Ups’, are on screening during the exhibition ‘Rip It Up and Start Again’ about five artists with influences on the international art scene of the 1970s and 1980s (William S. Burroughs, Charles Henri Ford, Ray Johnson, Arthur Russell, Philippe Thomas) from 10 Oct to 22 Nov 2009 at the Kunstverein München. In official art historical discourses, however, they received little attention and remain virtually unrecognized to a wider public till today.

Trends of society reflected in luxury fashion The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo presents new views on luxury in times of a challenged world (financial markets, ecology, etc.) from 31 October 2009 to 17 January 2010. Some 100 fashion creations from the collection of The Kyoto Costume Institute (KCI), dating from the 17th century to current times, document our changing times and values from the perspective of luxury, through fashion - a field that sensitively reflects human desire and the trends of society.

Video: In 'Flight Paths' Aaron Koblin visualizes the air traffic over North America. The statistical data are from the U.S. Federal aviation administration. Watch the video: Aaron Koblin, Google Creative Labs, speaking about art on statistics at the Creativity and Technology Conference CaT 2009 'The Wizard of Data Art'.

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Karin Sawetz is journalist, media researcher and fashion scientist (Mag. Dr. phil.). > sawetz.com

Source: Original article with image and videos on https://www.fashion.at/survey/2009/karinsawetz11-2009.htm.


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